The booing Indianapolis Colts fans found out about Andrew Luck’s retirement in the middle of a preseason game Saturday night, 15 days before their Super Bowl hopefuls’ Week 1 opener.

NFL fans have been conditioned to live and die rabidly with every roster transaction, every contract extension, every injury report; to regard brutal injuries as challenges to the team’s success rather than threats to players’ everyday lives.

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So if it is classless for those fans to be frustrated and skeptical when their best player, with no historical precedent, rips their team's title hopes to shreds on short notice due to "mental fatigue," then the entire fan model the NFL has built is classless.

You can’t ask them to habitually overlook the brutality inherent to the NFL and then, on no notice, have reasoned context for their quarterback quitting due to that violence — with his best-known current ailment being an undiagnosed mystery injury to his ankle or calf, no less.

An Indianapolis Colts fan holds up a sign after news broke that Andrew Luck was planning on retiring. (Bobby Ellis/Getty Images)

Does Luck deserve a better sendoff as a classy representative of the franchise and city? Yes, he does. But fans reacting badly in the moment underlines the actual story and its effect on the other people playing the game.

Andrew Luck retired at the age of 29, in the middle of a preseason game, 15 days before Week 1! And players, who are far more familiar with the physical strain of playing professional football than fans, are not necessarily more understanding than those booing fans.

I have asked several NFL players in the past 24 hours how they’d feel if they were Luck’s teammates, and plenty aren’t as accepting as you might think.

Some say if they were Luck’s teammate they would completely understand his decision and wouldn’t resent him for doing what’s best for him and his family.

But others say the Colts’ players have every right to be ticked off that Luck is leaving so close to the start of a promising season, on top of having a mysterious injury that remains undiagnosed.

This makes sense. Just on pure workplace terms, Luck's timing is wildly unprofessional.

Bills corner Vontae Davis was skewered by Buffalo teammates as “disrespectful” last September when he retired at halftime of a regular season game. Luck, on the other hand, is getting nothing but metaphorical handshakes and pats on the back.

The rationale for the retirement itself is sound, of course. Luck cited the interminable injury-pain-rehab cycle as a driving force behind his fatigue. Totally understandable after years of risking his health for his teammates, enduring a laundry list of injuries, only to be undercut by former Colts GM Ryan Grigson’s mismanagement of the roster around him.

In retiring, Luck leaves tens and maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on the table if he stays retired for good. Anyone willing to put that much money behind a decision has surely thought through the consequences.

But it’s also a fact that Luck, unlike the majority of NFL players, has the luxury to retire this abruptly because he is financially secure. How many of the 90 players in Colts camp could even afford to do what Luck did on Saturday? How many would escape the brutality of the game if they could? Must be nice to have the choice.

That's where the split comes. Luck's departure would be stunning even if he'd announced before training camp. But to do so now, so near the season, affects those players for whom football and all its terrible effects on physical and mental health are not so optional. Luck’s last-minute departure could negatively affect the earning power of his now-former teammates by compromising the victories, playoff experiences and stats that would make them attractive and well-paid free agents.

It is not Luck's first time dealing with a mysterious injury. In the winter of 2016, after tearing the labrum in his throwing shoulder in 2015, Luck got into a snowboarding accident and sprained the AC joint in the same shoulder. The news didn’t surface until NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport broke it last September.

Luck went on to play well in 2016 anyway and insisted the sprain had nothing to do with his Jan. 2017 labrum surgery that caused him to miss the entire 2017 season. Fans might be excused for wondering, in the moment, if there was more to the story this time, too.

They might also wonder if they would have better prospects at the position had Luck made his (perfectly reasonable!) decision known at a more appropriate time. Colts GM Chris Ballard hasn’t drafted a QB the past two years despite holding the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 draft, four picks in that draft’s top 52, and three second-round picks this April.

I want the best for Luck. I hope he is happy in his post-football life, if that is in fact where he’s arrived for good, though it seems a comeback still could be in the cards after listening to Ballard and owner Jim Irsay on Sunday and seeing the Colts refuse to reclaim Luck’s bonus money.

However, Luck plays a team sport, not an individual one. There are dramatic repercussions to his decision for Colts players and employees, especially at this late juncture. There are also repercussions for the fans, who never saw it coming and therefore, understandably, reacted that way.